1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to curing adhesives and, in particular, to an improved system, method, and apparatus for ultraviolet curing of adhesives with light beam shaping.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the prior art, some manufacturing materials are applied as fluids and then cured (i.e., set or hardened) with light or heat treatment processes. For example, some liquid adhesives are cured with ultraviolet (UV) light. These classes of materials are widely utilized in various types of industries.
In the production of hard disk drives, one such application is the head stack assembly (HSA). HSA assembly utilizes a liquid or gel adhesive during the fabrication process to join some of the components. In one example, small dots of glue are used to attach the integrated lead suspension (ILS) to the actuator comb in order to improve the dynamics of the disk drive. The assembly process typically utilizes “oven flood UV curing” to set the liquid glue dots, which comprises indiscriminately flooding an entire array of the assemblies with UV light. Although this type of processing for UV-cured adhesives is workable, an improved solution that more selectively cures adhesives would be desirable.